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How “Sesame Street” Revolutionized Teaching Using Music

Since its inception in 1969, the public television show has redefined what it means to teach children through TV, with music as its resounding voice. Before “Sesame Street,” it wasn’t even clear that you could do that; once the series began, as a radical experiment that joined educational research and social idealism with the lunacy of puppets and the buoyancy of advertising jingles, it proved that kids are very receptive to a grammar lesson wrapped in a song. – The New York Times

The Joys Of Traveling From Small Town To Small Town Performing Shakespeare For High Schoolers For $225 A Week (A Reminiscence)

“As a recent graduate with a BFA in acting, I could have been stuck lip-synching to Buddy Holly at an amusement park or being cast as a Native American in a problematic outdoor drama in Chillicothe, Ohio. But here I was doing something respectable; noble, even.” Jeremy D. Larson recalls the three-hour load-ins for 8 a.m. shows. The flu passed from cast member to cast member when no one could sit out a show. The drink and drugs. The streaking. And the time they made the mistake of uttering the title of The Scottish Play out loud – The Outline

Cruising For Art – The Bizarro World Of Cruise Ship Art Auctions

One gimmick in particular stood out: A pair of works presented turned away from the audience, and sold as one lot, without any idea of what they looked like. “They are going to be two of the most gorgeous works of art that anyone has ever seen,” Borotescu promised the audience. “Once you turn it around, if it’s something you don’t like, you don’t have to keep it.” – artnet

Anish Kapoor’s ‘Orbit’ — AKA Boris Johnson’s Giant Erector-Set/Sliding Board — Is Millions In Debt

The 376-foot sculpture was commissioned by Johnson, then London’s Mayor, for the 2012 Olympics, and he had hoped that it would become London’s answer to the Eiffel Tower (7 million annual visitors) or the Statue of Liberty (over 4 million). But Orbit never even cracked the 200,000-visitor mark — not even after it was bailed out by tycoon Lakshmi Mittal (which is why it’s now named ArcelorMittal Orbit) and Johnson had Carsten Höller add a sliding tube for which admission is now £17.50 ($21). (Maybe that’s why visitorship is down more than 20% from its peak.) Total debt on the contraption is now £13 million ($15.7 million). – Artnet

Inside India’s First-Ever Contemporary Sculpture Park

At the Madhavendra Palace, just outside Jaipur, “floral murals, elaborate arches, patterned columns, dark paneled doors, and stone-lined courtyards serve as maximal backdrops for sculptures — many of them site-specific — that simultaneously respond to the environment and introduce challenging new ideas into the space. Beauty and contemporary politics collide in room after room; visits to the palace become opulent treasure hunts.” – Artsy